Gifted Tongues

High School Debate and Adolescent Culture
Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-691-07450-4
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 328 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 537 g

Reihe: Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology

Learning to argue and persuade in a highly competitive environment is only one aspect of life on a high-school debate team. Teenage debaters also participate in a distinct cultural world--complete with its own jargon and status system--in which they must negotiate complicated relationships with teammates, competitors, coaches, and parents as well as classmates outside the debating circuit. In Gifted Tongues, Gary Alan Fine offers a rich description of this world as a testing ground for both intellectual and emotional development, while seeking to understand adolescents as social actors. Considering the benefits and drawbacks of the debating experience, he also recommends ways of reshaping programs so that more high schools can use them to boost academic performance and foster specific skills in citizenship. Fine analyzes the training of debaters in rapid-fire speech, rules of logical argumentation, and the strategic use of evidence, and how this training instills the core values of such American institutions as law and politics. Debates, however, sometimes veer quickly from fine displays of logic to acts of immaturity--a reflection of the tensions experienced by young people learning to think as adults. Fine contributes to our understanding of teenage years by encouraging us not to view them as a distinct stage of development but rather a time in which young people draw from a toolkit of both childlike and adult behaviors. A well-designed debate program, he concludes, nurtures the intellect while providing a setting in which teens learn to make better behavioral choices, ones that will shape relationships in their personal, professional, and civic lives.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fine, Gary Alan

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Kinder- und Jugendsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface ix

Introduction 3

One: Learning to Talk 19

Two: Rites of Arguments 38

Three: Evidence and the Creation of Truth 67

Four: In the Round 97

Five: Our Team 133

Six: Debate Culture 162

Seven: Teachers and Coaches 190

Eight: Gifted Leisure and the Politics of Debate 217

Nine: Debate and the Adolescent Toolkit 241

Appendix: Communities of Debate 252

Notes 271

Glossary 297

Index 299

Über Autor(innen)

Fine, Gary Alan
Gary Alan Fine is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. He is the author of "Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming, Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work", and "With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture".